Global New Venture Challenge Announces 7 Finalists Competing for Investments

2024 GNVC Winner Investable

Seven teams have been selected for the 19th annual Global New Venture Challenge (GNVC) finals, taking place on Friday, June 5.

The GNVC is a track of the New Venture Challenge dedicated to Chicago Booth’s Executive MBA students worldwide. It debuted in 2008 to accommodate the growing entrepreneurial aspirations of Booth’s Executive MBA students on each of its three global campuses — Chicago, Hong Kong, and London.

>> Register to attend the finals event here

Each year the GNVC brings together more than 80 alumni and members of the business community to serve as coaches, judges, panelists, and guest speakers. Nineteen teams were selected to compete in three different semifinals, which were held at each global campus. The seven selected finalists will face off in Chicago on June 5 and present their ventures in person to a panel of distinguished judges to compete for investments.

This year’s GNVC finalists are:

Chicago

• KLIQ Ventures // Two out of three patients who see a surgeon for a joint replacement don’t need one — they need a different doctor entirely. Kliq screens and quickly matches patients to the right doctor at the right time, before wasting visits. Joint replacements first, orthopedics next, then all of medicine.
• Morton Labs // Morton Labs is a new venture specializing in computational science for fusion energy research. Its mission is to reduce the time and cost required to design, validate, and optimize fusion systems by building and maintaining the digital infrastructure that connects legacy and next-generation physics codes into usable, well-validated multi-physics workflows.
• TradeCampus // TradeCampus partners with community colleges to create college-owned, skilled trades schools, housed in purpose-built facilities. It delivers an end-to-end platform — from feasibility and site strategy through facility construction and opening, curriculum frameworks, and post-opening support enabling colleges to expand workforce education beyond traditional degree pathways.

Hong Kong

• Aura Interactive // Aura Interactive develops an AI-powered interactive character platform, transforming licensed IP into physical companions that educate children and engage collectors through conversation and personalized interaction.
• Lumana // Lumana is a privacy-first, non-intrusive mmWave + thermal sensing system for the aged-care sector that detects unwitnessed falls, night-time risks, and hygiene-related events without cameras or wearables. It delivers continuous, room-level monitoring to support safer and more dignified aging in senior living communities and home-health environments.

London

• Flex // Flex is an AI-powered running coach that builds training plans around real-life constraints, not the other way around. Unlike rigid apps that assume perfect weeks, Flex starts with actual availability, adapts proactively when life intervenes, and honestly tells you what goals are achievable.
• Phinorm // Phinorm provides on-device drone classification and location software for defense sensors that allow warfighters to detect drones significantly earlier and with greater accuracy. Rather than require more computing power, our technology reduces compute burden on radar systems on the battlefield and in civilian settings.

The GNVC finals pitches and awards announcement will be streamed live. To view the livestream, you must register.

The Global New Venture Challenge is a track of the Edward L. Kaplan, ’71, New Venture Challenge program dedicated to Chicago Booth Executive MBA students worldwide. Second-year students in the Chicago Booth Executive MBA program are eligible to apply to the GNVC and participate as one of their capstone course requirements. The program is run by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in collaboration with the Executive MBA program at Chicago Booth. To learn more about the Global New Venture Challenge, click here.